I want to write something that’s True, regardless of whether or not it happened. Fiction can be True. It can also be crap. I don’t want to write crap. It might happen, but that’s not my intention. I just want to write something True. So here I go.

My room is quiet, but it is by no means silent. My breathing goes a long way in a sparsely furnished place, and the air conditioner is somehow louder than the train that creaks by a mile away. One roommate gasps in her sleep and then rolls over to her left side. The other does not move. I do not move.

I am small today. I have not done even a third of the things on the to-do list I never got around to writing down. I ate too little food today, and the food I did eat was not good for me. I read a soft book that came in the mail, but I forgot to make an outline for a paper. I am small today. I I I I I… the letter moves in waves across the back of my eyes and it is almost as effective as counting sheep. I try to replace the monotonous mantra with a new and positive one, but as each fresh letter goes by, my tired-but-not-sleepy brain straightens it out so I am left again with I I I I I.

The sky was grey today and now it is a swirling navy. The moon mocks me without trying, peeking in and out from behind clouds and crooning, “Come visit me… I’m right here… Please won’t you come grace my surface with your hesitant steps?” I pull the curtains closer together and the moon sighs from so far away. My room is quiet. One roommate is stirring. I hold my breath. She sighs softer than the moon, and I slowly let the air out of my nose. She wrote a paper today and was feeling big. I was happy for her.

Today I spoke with a man about traveling to the moon. He said I couldn’t do it because I’m afraid of rockets, heights, and space. I told him he was missing the point. He crossed his arms, and I know that he is smarter than me about these things, but he was still missing the point. I tried to explain the point—even though that would ruin it—but my words stopped before they could even form a sentence in my head, and I was left stammering about stars. I am often left stammering about stars. He does not know that about me, but it does not make a difference.

Sometimes, days are not special for me because they were not designed to be. Today was not special for me, but it was for someone else, I am sure of it. I think about this and then I remember my favorite song, so I pull the blankets off of my bare legs and place my feet gently on the ground, being far too cautious. I have never been loud enough getting out of bed to wake anyone up, but I do not want this to be the first night. I open the bedroom door and walk into the room next door to get some paper. My feet are too loud on the linoleum floor that stretches between this room and the next one. They smack smack smack and stick to the floor. The light in the next room is harsher than my feet against the kitchen floor, but at least this room is carpeted. I find enough paper that for a moment I am overwhelmed, but then I remember that it is just paper.

We only have small scissors, for small hands, but I am small today so this makes me happy. My fingers fit perfectly into the holes of the scissors and I begin to cut the paper without thinking about it. I fold and crease and cut and fold again and unfold and cut and press and hold and cut. I open up the paper and it is not crisp anymore. It is a star now. I set it aside. I make more. I make so many stars that I run out of paper and start to make small cuts on the scraps. My stack of stars would blind the whole world if they were hanging in the sky. They are bright and new and mine.

I remember the words to my song and I close my eyes. I am sleepy now. I am drained from creating and destroying. The stars lie on the stained table in front of me and I wonder what to do with them. I think that they belong in the sky, but I also think I want to throw them at the man who said I could not travel to the moon. I cannot do the latter for many reasons (Where on earth does he live, for instance? It is too late to go knocking on doors and asking for a man who was mean to me and does not even know it), but I do not think I can do the former either. The sky is too big and my stars are not heavy enough to float.

It is very late. I do not want to sleep but my brain does, desperately. I pick up the stars and place them all over the floor, inches apart. The last one in my hand seems different. It is not symmetrical and I like the way it flops to one side when I move my arm. I fold this one up and put a corner on my tongue. It does not taste like the tree it was made from or the star it has become. It tastes flat. I unfold it and stick it to the window, letting the moist corner connect with the glass. I know it will not stay there, but for the moment, it is the only star in the room that it doing what a star is supposed to do. This thought gives me peace.

I return to my room. Neither roommate moves. The curtains are still drawn and my bed is expecting me. It is cold, but the atoms of my skin quickly smash into the atoms of the sheets and create the perfect temperature. I close my eyes.

I… I… I…

rockets… moon… stars… rockets… moon… stars…rockets…

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